OpenSim land area passes 80,000 region milestone

The total reported land area of OpenSim’s public grids has passed 80,000 regions — a record high.

This is despite the fact that InWorldz, the most popular OpenSim grid, did not report its land area this month.

The total number of registered users went up by 9,764, and even the number of active users increased slightly, despite the fact that it’s the middle of summer and many education-oriented regions and grids are on break.

GreekLife also added the most registered users and most active users this month. However, this may be a bookkeeping issue rather than a sign of extremely rapid growth. Three months ago, all the grid’s stats fell sharply. For example, their registered user numbers fell nearly to a tenth of what they were before. Since registered users numbers never fall as long as a grid stays in business, especially not by such a dramatic amount, it’s likely that the problem was a stats collection glitch that they fixed this month.

Land area of OpenSim’s public grids, in standard region equivalents. (Hypergrid Business data.)

GreekLife registered 3,797 new user this month, though, again, this may be a bookkeeping issue. Kitely was in second place with 1,520 new registered users followed by InWorldz with 1,048, Emilac with 801 and Virtual Brasil with 412. Adreans-World grid lost 218 registered users.

OpenSim is a free, open source virtual world platform that’s compatible with the Oculus Rift. It allows people with no technical skills to quickly and cheaply create virtual worlds, and then teleport to other virtual worlds. Those with technical skills can run OpenSim worlds on their own servers for free, while commercial hosting starts at less than $5 a region — compared to $300 a region for the same land in Second Life.

Popularity

When it comes to general-purpose social grids, especially closed grids, the rule of thumb is: the busier, the better. People looking to make new friends look for grids that already have the most users. Merchants looking to sell content will go to the grids with the most potential customers. Event organizers looking for the biggest audience… you get the idea.

Kitely Market passes 10,000 listings milestone

The online marketplace groups different versions of the same item into one listing, much like Amazon and other online shopping sites, so that, say, all the colors of a particular dress are considered to be a single product listing.

When all the variations are counted individually, as on the Second Life Marketplace, the Kitely Market totals 19,071 different variations. Of those, 14,314 are exportable to other grids.

The market now delivers to 197 different grids, up by three from last month.

Growth in exportable and non-exportable content on the Kitely Market. (Kitely data.)

VirTec vending machine network loses ground

It was a very bad month for the VirTec vending network. Both the number of merchants who had transactions on the network and the transaction volume fell this month.

The total US dollar value of transactions fell from $511 last month to $360.

“The significant drop is just a summer hole there are ups and downs trough out the year,” former Virtec owner Virtouse Lilienthal told Hypergrid Business.

The number of merchants who made transactions in June dropped slightly from 66 to 55 merchants.

Gloebits currency continues steady growth across OpenSim

Gloebits, a virtual currency that can be used on multiple grids, added a total of 52 user accounts this month and the transaction volume went up by nine percent to a new high of $3,839 in dollar equivalents.

Grids can have more than one currency, with some grids using Gloebit on hypergrid shopping regions and their own in-world currency elsewhere.

OSgrid will celebrate its 10th birthday end of this month

OSgrid will host its tenth birthday on July 24 at the OSG10B region, and the celebration will feature live music, dancing and exhibitions.

Creators will also have a chance to splay their creations and unleash their ideas and designs from July 24 to 30.

The builds will be those built by the residents and there is no particular theme for the event, grid president Dan Banner told Hypergrid Business.

“We do have exhibit space left if anyone is interested and can make the deadline of the 24th,” he said.

July 29 and 30 will be the days for dancing and live entertainment to celebrate 10 years of business.

The hypergrid address is login.osgrid.org:OSG10B3.

Genesis Global Journey hosts talent show next month

The Caribbean-themed Genesis Global Journey grid will have a talent competition this August titled “OpenSim Got Talent.”

The event will be held on the Freebies Island region and winners get a cash prize of US$50, grid owner Zig Genesis told Hypergrid Business.

“Winners will be determined by votes, this way the OpenSim community determines who wins,” he said. “A committee comprised of seasoned OpenSim users has been set up with additional people to be added in order to ensure effective planning and smooth running of the event.”

The event stage has already been built, he said.

The hypergrid address is ggj.world:8002:freebies island.

The grid is also offering free land to new residents. You can contact Zig Genesis in-world for more information and conditions.

Neverworld to host a coin hunt

Neverworld grid will be hosting the coin hunt for 24 hours from 12 a.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, July 29 at the Dream Hunt region. The winner will be the person who collects the most coins and will go home with a prize of a free standard region.

The region will remain free for six months, Neverworld spokesperson told Hypergrid Business.

The region will have no content but Neverworld can upload an OAR if the winner wants.

The contest is open to all including hypergrid residents, but the winner will need to create a Neverworld avatar account to run the region.

Looking for free legal scripts?

Check whether you can get a free script at the landing area of Script Magic freebies region in OSgrid. These scripts are donated by people around the OpenSim and you can use them freely.

They already have various scripts donated in the building, avatar, transportation, effects and texture categories. You can also donate a script for others to use.

The hypergrid address is: hg.osgrid.org:80:Script Magic

Learn or improve design and photography skills in-world

Metaverse University of DigiWorldz. Image courtesy DigiCenter.

Ever wondered how to improve your design skills in-world? It is all possible at DigiCenter or Metaverse University of DigiWorldz located at DigiWorldz grid, where you can learn various courses and techniques virtually under various tutors. The techniques courses include building, texturing, scripting, region management, real-life program skill and many others.

You can attend the One Prim Wonders class at 8:00 p.m. Pacific Time on July 20 at the DigiCenter campus where instructor Koz Maesa will introduce the Prim Torture tool. You will learn how to transform ordinary prims into various objects using reshaping techniques. You can join them as they focus on how to reshape various items each month.

Ever felt like you can try photojournalism in-world? You can attend Photography 101 at 8:00 p.m. Pacific Time on August 2 at the same venue, with instructor Gray Delwood and learn various skills that make a great in-world photographer including windlights, composition, backgrounds, AOs & pose balls, and basic editing. This class is offered every Wednesday at the same location.

The hypergrid address is login.digiworldz.com:8002:DigiCenter.

Transitions

We added three new grids to our list this month including the Metaworld grid which currently has only one and hypergrid-enabled region named Metaworld Core and two registered users. The hypergrid address is metaworld.outworldz.net:8002. Other new grids are Canadian-based VR Playground and HGLuv grid which has has 21 standard equivalent regions and 13 users in total.

At the HGLv grid, you can upload your snapshots after logging in on their website and those snapshots will be shown on your viewer login screen instead of the default grid page snapshot captured using the link.

Grids that have been suspended for more than two months will be marked as closed. If your grid isn’t on the active grids list, and not on the suspended list, it may have been marked closed when it shouldn’t be. Please let us know.

And if there’s a public grid we’re not tracking, please email us at [email protected]. There’s no centralized way to find OpenSim grids, so if you don’t tell us about it, and Google doesn’t alert us, we won’t know about it.

By “public,” we mean grids that allow hypergrid visitors, or have a website where people can register for or request accounts.

In addition, if a grid wants to be included in the monthly stats report and the most active and largest grid lists, it needs to have a stats page that shows the number of unique 30-day logins, and the total number of regions on the grid. In order for the grid not to be undercounted, 30-day active users stat should include hypergrid visitors, and the land area should be in the form of standard region equivalents, square meters, or square kilometers.

July Region Counts on the Top 40 Grids

The list below is a small subset of existing OpenSim grids. We are now tracking a total of 1,244 different publicly-accessible grids, 261 of which were active this month, and 192 of which published their statistics.

David Kariuki is a technology journalist who has a wide range of experience reporting about modern technology solutions. A graduate of Kenya's Moi University, he also writes for Cleanleap, and has previously worked for Resources Quarterly and Construction Review. Email him at [email protected].

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